By Jim Leusner
The Orlando Sentinel
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — When a shoplifting suspect beat Orange County Deputy Sheriff Gayle Cadiz unconscious outside an east Orlando Office Depot on Feb. 2, investigators knew only his race, his gender and that he was a passenger in a late-model, white Mitsubishi Galant.
Detectives were forced to begin canvassing more than 250 Galant owners in Central Florida during the next six days until they got a tip eventually leading to career criminal Malik G. Stephenson.
In the future, someone such as Stephenson may go immediately to the top of the suspect list.
That’s the idea behind a new intelligence-led policing program being set up at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. Analysts will link and search an array of databases — arrests, towed vehicles, parking tickets, CrimeLine tips and suspect-interview reports -- to better identify violent and repeat offenders, their associates and vehicles.
Stephenson, 34, of east Orange County, was known to deputies, Orlando police and other Central Florida officers who arrested him two dozen times on shoplifting, auto theft, drug and fleeing-arrest cases during the past decade. He is being held without bail on 14 attempted murder charges. They stem from the Cadiz attack and shots fired at deputies before Stephenson surrendered following a two-hour standoff a SWAT team.
He was jailed for a year and placed on three years probation after nearly running down an Altamonte Springs police officer with his car while fleeing a traffic stop in January 2006. And he was questioned in October 2006 when deputies were trying to locate his brother, who was accused of trying to run over a Florida Highway Patrol trooper.
“When we met him 11/2 years ago [on the trooper case], there was no doubt in our mind that he was violent and did not like law enforcement based on his statements,” said sheriff’s Felony Squad Sgt. Bruce Vail, one of the officers fired upon before Stephenson’s arrest Feb 7.
While working on the FHP case, Vail interviewed Stephenson at a home in the Stoneybrook East subdivision. A white Galant was there. Deputies also had information that Stephenson was involved in retail thefts, Vail said.
It turned out to be the same home deputies searched hours before Stephenson’s arrest -- and where they found a note he wrote confessing to the attack on Cadiz, detectives said.
Had all the known information on Stephenson -- buried deep in various police-agency records -- been more accessible to deputies, the Cadiz case could have been solved sooner, said sheriff’s Capt. Lee Massie.
New police strategy
Intelligence-based policing was pioneered in England in the 1990s. It spread among federal, state and local agencies combating terrorism in new intelligence “fusion centers” nationwide since Sept. 11, 2001. Now the concept is taking root for use against street crime.
The sheriff’s office is training frontline deputies to capture more details about the people and vehicles they stop, re-designing its computer databases and teaming up crime and intelligence analysts to search for violent-crime trends. Officials think it will better alert patrol deputies and detectives to serious criminals.
Intelligence-led policing “says capture the data today because he may be a suspect another day -- just like Malik,” said Massie, one of the department’s point men on the project who also oversees Central Florida’s multiagency fusion center that opened last summer.
Sheriff Kevin Beary said the intelligence-based policing also will produce more detailed bulletins to warn residents about criminals and gang members in their neighborhoods.
The New Jersey State Police has been using the policing strategy since 2005, said Frank Rodgers, who retired last year as the agency’s No. 2 man and is now a policing consultant.
“We’ve had tremendous success with it and the gang threat in New Jersey,” Rodgers said. “We have reduced violent crime in big cities . . . and we’re being more intelligent about our [policing] decisions. The public sees a reduction in crime and you do it cheaper.”
A crime career such as Stephenson’s -- with more 50 arrests, several jail and prison stints, and a history of shoplifting, resisting arrest and fleeing police -- can provide investigators with important clues once they are aware of it.
Criminal history
Stephenson first went to prison in North Carolina at age 19 in 1993 for assault with a deadly weapon. He also served time for possession with intent to sell drugs, obstruction of justice and resisting an officer, North Carolina prison records show.
After he was released in April 1997, Stephenson moved to the Orlando area and was arrested two dozen times during the next 10 years, mostly in Orange and Seminole counties.
But despite short jail stints and probation, his crimes continued.
In March 2001 in Orange County, Stephenson was sentenced to 21/2 years in prison for battery on an officer, resisting arrest with violence, and vehicle theft.
A month later in Seminole County, he received a four-year prison term for fleeing police and leaving the scene of a vehicle crash with injuries. And in May 2001, he received three years in prison for a stolen property charge.
Since he again left prison in October 2004, Stephenson’s arrests continued.
Deputies hope the new data-mining and information-sharing system will make it harder for repeat criminals to do business.
“You can run,” Beary said, “but it’s going to be a whole lot harder to hide.”
COpyright 2008 The Sun-Sentinel